When it comes to church life, people often fall into two camps: some are quick to switch congregations, relatively unbothered by the idea of going somewhere new, while others view the decision as weighty and determinant, even wondering if leaving would be sinful.
This impasse is one of many at play when issues of abusive leadership arise in local churches. In “It Takes a Village to Escape a Toxic Leader,” Russell Moore, who heads the Public Theology Project at CT, writes:
As neurologists and psychologists have shown, the experience of exile from a tribe is often experienced in the same way as physical pain.
The rationalizations, then, can be easy to believe: “The mission is too important for me to spend time dwelling on my intuitions telling me something’s not right”; or, “No one else seems to see this, so I must be the crazy one”; or, “If I’m gone, I’ll be replaced by someone much worse, and I can do more from the inside.” As we’ve seen time and time again, those lines of thinking end in disaster.
As megachurches and Christian organizations grow at exponential rates, more and more people feel the pull to stay rather than leave or speak up, as was the case with Mars Hill, Willow Creek, and Ravi
Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Kate Shellnut’s recent look into Bethlehem Baptist Church ponders those vital questions: When is it right to stay? When is it time to leave? And how can we know the difference when, for most of us, our churches do not enter the news cycle, but can inflict harm just like those who do?
Pain alone is not a reason to leave—after all, in this world we will have trouble. All churches are led by and filled with broken people, and no congregation is perfect. But toxicity and abuse, along with a lack of humility and repentance, are sure signs of trouble.
Deciding when to leave or stay can be almost impossible to determine, but as Moore writes, one thing is clear: “We need to teach people that the story of Jesus does not harm the vulnerable. So if you find yourself in the wrong story, you can always leave.”
